“We have no ambition in Iraq except to remove a threat and to restore control of that country to its people….The dangers to our country and to our world will be overcome.”
Today marks the sixth anniversary of George W. Bush’s speech in announcement of the Iraq invasion, which for many people marks the advent of a shift in American foreign policy named as the “Bush Doctrine.” In short, this is the license of the President to unilaterally wage “preventative” war against bodies that have not yet attacked the U.S., but pose a foreseeable threat to do so. Tied up with this is the notion that the military has the capacity to create a situation in which danger does not exist. This, of course, finds no place within even the loosest interpretations of Just War theory, making the prerogative for war-making conditional upon no external moral standard; the only condition for war is the existence of a threat in the perception of the President.
Why is it, though, that we have named this doctrine in honor of Bush? As Andrew Bacevich never tires of pointing out, this has been the standard use to which the military has been put at least since Vietnam. George W. may be the apogee of a line of commanders in chief who believe in the power of military intervention to solve international tension, build democracy, and secure peace, he is not its founder. Iraq gets our attention because it has not gone as we had hoped, but it is not of another category than our smaller-scale interventions in Panama, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and so on.
